


Driving Force

by Fluffinson (orphan_account)



Category: Dark (TV 2017)
Genre: M/M, Noah has a name?!, i didn't know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-17 17:51:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14194428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Fluffinson
Summary: Sometimes things don't go according to plan. Noah refuses to live with this fact.





	Driving Force

**Author's Note:**

> Written with the view that Noah is acting out the book for a greater purpose. Also that in the time loop, time does not progress chronologically if you are a traveler. [more notes at end]

 

 

 

Helge Doppler is just a name in a book. Until Noah meets him.

He meets him first as an old man. Beneath his age Noah can make out a soft face with prettyish features. His feathered hair and rounded shoulders only act as factors to make him seem dainty somehow - cute, almost. His scars are hidden beneath shag and beard, not so noticeable.

'This is going to be my partner in crime' is what he thinks when he first looks at him, from the doorway of the seniors care home. Noah knows only the basic details, the skeletal sketch of what is inside the journal.

The journal doesn't tell him their dynamic, doesn't tell him how far the span of Helge's trust in him reaches.

He sees Noah and flinches back hard and Noah figures it must not be much.

 

 

 

Traveling back, to 1986, the first time Noah meets Helge - and it's different from seeing a picture, a picture doesn't show the halted way he moves with pallid self revulsion in each step - it's easy to take advantage.

Noah's the 'new' priest, but he's also the old priest. He just hasn't set that up quite yet. But his future self has taken care of him.

He preaches a sermon on Sunday and halfway through Doppler slinks in self consciously, fidgets in the pew, and looks so helplessly lost that Noah begins to understand why he didn't make notes. His course of action is laid out so brightly it nearly blinds him.

He reaches the door, greeting the churchgoers as they leave and Helge waits, as if he's hoping to slip by unnoticed. He waits too long though and then he's the only one left. He fidgets, wrings his hands.

"Don't be nervous." Noah says.

"I-I think I recognize you." Helge blurts.

He's charming, is Noah's first impression. The way he rounds in on himself shyly, even the sad longing in his face - looking for anything, for anyone. Looking for Noah.

"Nevermind, I-I'm sorry Father." Helge amends, red faced, turning to hide his hideously scarred face. He tries to dart past but Noah blocks his way.

"I recognize you child." Noah says and Helge goes stiff. Noah makes a note to remember the words.

They're about the same age. Helge's build is slimmer than Noah's, but he's softer in the middle. Softer all around. The eyes are the same. Disquietly stunning. Noah tells himself there's nothing wrong with appreciation. He's never been one to let pleasure get in the way of business.

Helge certainly gives the impression of _too much effort_ anyway.

 

 

 

He meets child Helge much later. The sketch is there, for everything that has to take place.

Greta brings the boy to church. He's a small, almost sickly, little thing. Different, a little. Not so subdued, not so lingeringly cautious. Still, he has that same knack for being unable to protest. Noah knows because he can see it in his Helge's eyes - that same expression, when he isn't agreeing but is unable to articulate his displeasure.

His Helge is so submissive it's almost sickening. Noah doesn't hesitate to label him a spineless coward. On a child, however, it seems damaging in no small part.

He feels for the boy. It's a learned behavior, obviously. It must come from Greta and her hateful aggression, given how ardently Bernd adores the boy.

 

 

 

Helge isn't allowed to handle the book, but on occasions he needs to be pressed into obedience Noah lets him see it. Noah speaks of personal darkness once and notices how hungrily Helge responds. So he empathizes, tells Helge that he _knows_ what Helge has been through.

God only knows the slights Helge imagines against himself but he falls for Noah's motivational arc hook, line and sinker.

Noah knows how many boys they're going to have to go through before it works. And he knows that their sacrifices are necessary.

Helge doesn't know.

Each time, he's led to believe it'll work. Until he doesn't - but that's just a hiccup. Helge holding out a screwdriver he has no intention of using. Helge is as much of a coward as he's always been.

The hug afterwards affects Noah more than he'll admit. It's meant to be a mind game, a power play, but when Helge trembles in his arms - sinks into him, Noah feels it in his heart.

And he'd thought that that was dead a long time ago.

 

 

 

Noah leaves old Helge presents. Little acorn men, and the coin on the string. The one his Helge promised him was absolutely necessary.

Noah doesn't know why he does it. 

Maybe, he doesn't want Helge to forget about him.

Noah doesn't have the luxury of staying with Helge, his Helge or any Helge. But that doesn't stop him from ensuring Helge has him. Whether he wants him haunting his life or not.

 

 

 

Things get confused, the timelines aren't progressing as they should. Noah finds himself with little Helge in his room in 1986 with a concussion and a head full of blood.

Helge sees.

Helge sees and crosses the room, he doesn't even spare a glance for Noah. Noah thinks he's going to hug himself right up until he wraps his hands around the boy's throat.

"It's better this way." Helge says to himself.

Little Helge grasps at him softly with small scrambling hands. But he quiets quickly, resigns himself almost immediately. He doesn't cry.

His Helge has tears streaming down his face as his hands tighten.

It's only a moment he has his hands around his own throat before Noah is ripping them apart.

"It's better this way." Helge repeats, keeps repeating. He's bloody and tattered himself, hospital bracelet around his wrist and Noah wonders what has _happened_.

Bruises are already forming on the boy's neck.

 

 

 

The boy hesitates, in the forest.

"They won't want to see me." He says sullenly, kicking at the dirt.

Noah has to get him back, so that he can tend to his Helge.

"They'll want to see you." Noah lies.

Greta will likely curse the day Helge returns, but Bernd at the very least will rejoice.

The boy presses a hand to the side of his face, gingerly. The skin is glued down solely from the blood, but the lip where it raises is visible.

"What if they can't recognize me?" Helge asks.

Before Noah can even think it through it's out of his mouth,

"Don't worry, I recognize you child."

 

 

 

Noah gets back and it's the wrong time. It's just after he's left, but far before.

Helge tells him he's seen himself from the future.

Sweet, old Helge is running around 1986. And he's damaging the faith Noah's Helge has in him.

Only they are both Noah's Helge and he doesn't pretend otherwise.

Noah knows that the boys are too much for Helge. Knows that that is what it's about for his future self.

Noah regurgitates his empathetic speech on dark times and pain and hurt.

He tells Helge something personal about himself. About the traveler.

It's something he hasn't done before - with anyone he's met.

Helge fidgets with a pine cone and he doesn't look _okay_.

Noah wants to tell him not to hurt himself but it wouldn't work anyway.

Future Helge, at least, has obviously learned from his Helge's mistakes, and hasn't tried to kill his younger self.

Of all the things - but Noah's saved Helge from himself and he'll have to let it go. It's already happened and there isn't a way back. No way to change it from this side of time that he's already lived and yet hasn't.

It's the sacrifice a time traveler makes.

 

 

 

 

 

Finally then, time runs out and it's the Time Noah has been waiting for. The time the machine will work.

He doesn't want it to. It will be the end of Noah and Helge.

"Why are you hurt?" He asks Helge, to begin with.

"Myself, from before, he tried to kill me."

Noah grows cold, finds he wants to curse, but doesn't.

"for the same reason you tried to kill yourself?" he asks.

"He wanted to save the boys." Helge responds, looks at Noah then like he _hates_ him, "I want to save them."

"You did." Noah answers.

The time machine will work and then - but it doesn't change things _here_.

"No more," Helge says, shakily, "no more _please_."

"No more," Noah assures firmly, no more are needed, "why did you try to kill yourself?"

He feels he needs to know.

"You don't care." Helge says quietly.

"Tell me Helge." 

"I have a brother," Helge says, incongruously, "around the same age as....Eric - and h-he's with G-Greta. If I...then he wouldn't....he wouldn't suffer. I wouldn't suffer."

"What's your brother's name?" Noah demands, mention of it isn't in the book.

"Peter." Helge says.

"That's your sons name." Noah presses, wants to make Helge tell the truth.

Only tears well in Helge's eyes, his lower lip wobbles.

"You knew." Helge accuses wetly, "but you said you knew so I - if she does to him what she...then it'd be better if he didn't exist."

A sharp edge of pain strikes Noah as he suddenly understands. Peter is Helge's child, Helge and Greta's child. Given his age -

and Helge thought he'd known.

"Do me a favour." Helge says bitterly, "When you go into the past to save those boys -" and the way he says it says he expects that Noah won't, "kill me while you're at it."

It's the most aggressive Helge has ever been.

"Helge." Noah says authoritatively, praying Helge will listen because he has a very short window now.

Helge stops and turns to him, face now unsure and very nearly apologetic, very nearly scared.

"How have you been hurt."

Helge doesn't answer.

Noah surges forward and - kisses him, just once.

Helge's mouth goes slack with something akin to horror and his eyes are wide discs when Noah leaves for the Last Time.

But he's coming back.

He knows know that he has to come back.

He can get in again - at the very start - and if he can just -

He'll relive the loop as many times as it takes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> To lesson any confusion - Once the time machine is created it is then able to affect time, creating multiple timelines (which cannot happen before the creation of the time machine). By using a time machine to go back before it was created and entering the wormhole it is then 'destroyed' meaning there is only one time line to be affected until it is created again - the one time line from which all future ones will branch off. If he did use the machine but not the wormhole the timeline would have became one of the 'multiple' timelines branching from the original. The wormhole is important in that respect. Noah's goal is to save the Helge of the original 'one' time line.


End file.
